1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for providing content, more particularly to a method and a system for transmitting large size content such as movie and animation through a network at a higher speed.
2. Description of the Related Technology
The Internet was used for sharing or providing information in the beginning of the Internet. However, nowadays, use of the Internet is increasing rapidly, and business field of the Internet is getting wider such as content provision, electronic commerce and advertisement, etc. Therefore, on-line business became as important as off-line business.
Conventionally, most content data provided through the Internet were small size data such as document or picture. However, as data transmission technology and devices develop, multimedia content is also widely provided.
FIG. 1A is a conventional content transmission system. As shown in FIG. 1A, in a conventional content transmission system, all user clients are coupled to a content server, and content is transmitted from one content server.
In the system of FIG. 1A, as the bandwidth of the content server is limited, content data cannot be transmitted to many user clients at the same time. Further, there may occur data loss, if transmission path between the user client and the content server is complex. Therefore, the transmission system of FIG. 1A is not appropriate for transmitting high speed data.
In order to solve above the problems, a method for minimizing data loss was developed, which locates proxy server, cache server, load balancing server, etc. between the content server and the user client. However, the above method still failed to solve the problem of server load which results in transmission failure.
FIG. 1B is another conventional content transmission system. The system of FIG. 1B includes a plurality of multicast routers along with a content server.
In the system of FIG. 1B, the content server provides content to the plurality of multicast routers, and the multicast routers provide content provided from the server to users. As users receive content from the multicast router or the server, the load of the server can be reduced.
However, the system of FIG. 1B can be applied only to the real time Internet broad casting and cannot be applied to VOD (Video On Demand) where different content is requested.
Further, installing of multicast routers requires too much expense and general routers should be substituted with multicast routers in the existing network.
FIG. 1C is a conventional system configuration of CDN (Content Delivery Network). In CDN, edge servers are installed and the edge server provides content to near users.
According to CDN system, as a plurality of distributed edge servers transmit content to users, the load of server can be reduced unlike the system of FIG. 1A where one server transmits content. However, as CDN system requires a plurality of edge servers, the CDN system requires much expense and content cannot be provided in a wide area.
Further, as the number of users increases, the load of distributed edge servers can also occur, and therefore, fundamental problem of server load cannot be solved in the CDN system.